


Limp

by stufful



Category: South Park
Genre: Gen, aka all i wanna write right now, gimme ghoul kennyyyyy, kenny is nonbinary, this is fallout new vegas au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 11:44:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16407863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stufful/pseuds/stufful
Summary: I’ve met death enough times to know how to fix a papercut like this anytime, quit your worrying.





	Limp

Kyle dragged himself along the route to Novac, forehead beating with sweat as he kept close to the highway. The wide golden horizon made everything seem so distant. He furiously tapped his finger against his Pip-Boy, cursing under his breath. His legs were staggering, one with a deep gash along the outer length of his thigh, swelling against his pants and dripping with blood. He had ripped off his sleeve to make a faux bandage, but it was doing nothing to help. According to his map, he was about four miles out from his destination.

He paused amid the road, glancing at a nearby billboard he could take cover behind to rest, as much cover as something could provide in the wasteland. Though he felt feverish and only God knows that he’d be able to stand again. Still, his legs felt weak and he decided to take a chance as he made his way towards the brush.

He slumped against the metal post, gazing up at the sign. _New Vegas_ … it felt like a fucking mockery. He was a medic and had been working a job in Sloan for a guy that had a run in with one of the deathclaws. Kyle had told the guy you had to be an idiot to even go near the Quarry Junction. Karma is a bitch in the end. He had left in the evening, hoping it would prevent any powder gangers from seeing him, so he could travel safely in the dark. No medic is really cut out for combat after all.

The fucking _thing_ had come out of nowhere, growling and snarling as it made a swipe for him. He had been lucky in the end, his leg _probably_ wouldn’t have to be amputated, if he got treatment soon. The issue at hand was that he had thrown his bag in the mess of it all while trying to scramble up a hill in escape. Now he couldn’t do jack shit. No supplies, no food, no water, no fucking caps. He knew there was an outpost with a doctor in Novac, but no one was sympathetic enough to do anything without benefit these days. Kyle had made it this far out of sheer willpower, so he’d at least ought to try.

A crunch of boots against dirt broke him from his thoughts, and he quickly sat up to peer around. If it was a feral or powder ganger, he was fucking screwed. No weapons, no strength, nothing. He tried his best to focus on his surroundings, squinting his eyes, but everything was blurring in and out at this point. A feeling of dread washed over him as he slumped back, he was going to die. This is what living in the wasteland was like, every day _was_ your last. “Who’s there!” He called out, but he sounded weak and his voice cracked in between the words. His throat was as dry as sand. He had never felt so vulnerable in his life; the entirety of the past few days had surely pegged his usual attitude down a notch.

Someone came into his line of sight, holding a pistol towards him till they dropped it to their side as they approached him. His anxiety quickly subsided. They slowly stepped towards him, leaning down to crouch beside him. Their face was covered with a mask, and they tilted their head to assumingly peer at him through tinted goggles. Their voice was muffled as they spoke, and he struggled to make out their words at first. “Well, you’re no real threat at all, now are you?”

“I don’t have anything for you, please.” He said, his voice nearly pleading.

They went quiet for a minute, gazing at him up and down, studying the gash in his leg. “Something got you real good…”

 He rolled his neck to turn away from them, not particularly in the mood at all to be stared at and studied like a specimen. That was _his_ job. However, he felt the throbbing pain very clearly as they pressed their hand against the wound. He flinched and groaned, tears welling up in his eyes. What the hell was wrong with this freak? He slapped their hand off him, “Quit that!”

“I’ve got a room at Novac, I can help fix you up there.”

“Are you a doctor? You sure as hell don’t look like one.”

“I’ve met death enough times to know how to fix a papercut like this anytime, quit your worrying.” Weirdly enough, Kyle could hear the smile in their voice as they leaned forward to help him up, supporting his weight. They were a lot smaller than him, by nearly a foot, but in no way were they weak.

The walk to Novac was a struggle for his conscious. Everything felt like a blur. He could tell his temperature was rising; the feeling of nausea spreading from his stomach up to his throat. Both the wound, hunger, and dehydration were getting to him. There was no choice but to go with this, thinking to himself as they walked, it was this or die. It was a slow trek, his limping growing worse and worse as the minutes passed.

No words were exchanged between the two of them, and even if there were, Kyle doubted he’d be able to manage a response. His focus was entirely on the throbbing, searing pain building up his leg and the scorching sun which eventually began to cool as the sky began to fall under the horizon.

 

Night had come by the time they reached Novac, only a pinkish hue creeping from along the mountains, people were shut in their homes with only candlelight illuminating the windows. If he hadn’t been in this condition, Kyle would’ve rolled his eyes at the mammoth of a dinosaur statue just outside the inn. The area was relatively silent besides the occasional buzzing of insects and the noise of farm animals in the distance, for once he felt like he could begin to relax.

Kenny, he had eventually learned their name, pushed him up the stairs towards their room. He didn’t know the conditions of this hotel, but right now he supposed he couldn’t choose to be a snob. Either way, he didn’t care, all he wanted was a bed. They stuck a key into the door, struggling for a minute to get it to turn, before it finally decided to give out and open. “Don’t even know why I bother locking it, piece of shit.”

Kyle immediately went to slump over onto the mattress, the springs groaning under his weight, while Kenny dropped their bag to the floor and turned their back to Kyle to pull off their mask and goggles. Blonde hair cascaded down, barely reaching their shoulders. When they turned to face him, he couldn’t help but mutter out an “Oh.”

“Oh? Like what you see?” A humble smile tugged at the corner of their lips as they went over towards the night stand beside him to open a first aid kit and pick up a bottle of brandy. “Get rid of your pants, I need to disinfect the cut.”

“You’re…” The word _ghoul_ hung from his tongue, but they weren’t quite at that point yet. He tugged down his pants to the best of his ability as he spoke, “Radiation damage.”

Only half their face was severely damaged, ligaments crawling up their neck towards their cheek and across the bridge of their nose. If they weren’t a ghoul, they were well on their way to becoming one. No one seemed to understand exactly how long the transformation took, some instantaneously while others it took a while. He couldn’t tell how much of their body was taken hold by the radiation, but they answered his question for him w hen they noticed his eyes leading down their figure. “Only my one side, down my shoulder, arm, and leg. Got lucky, some would say. Not quite enough yet to count as a ghoul, though that don’t stop people from being _people._ ”

They poured the brandy over the wound on his leg, and he knew the alcohol would disinfect it, but the experience was a bitch. Kyle cursed under his breath, a sharp sting spreading across the inflamed area. He peered down, his leg was entirely swollen around the womb, and the scratch looked nasty. It’d take him a while to heal and recover, but he knew he’d be okay in the end. “I need… stitches next.”

“Oh, we got a Mr. Know-it-all, huh?” They mused, pulling a needle and thread out from the kit. They disinfected the needle as well before they began to get to work.

He relaxed against the pillows as best as he could, “No. I’m a medic, I was helping out a guy in Sloan and—”

“Listen, I don’t need to hear your whole damn story, you need to be careful who you tell that shit to. You got in a nasty situation, I can see that, you don’t need to justify me helping you out.”

He frowned, “Why _are_ you helping me? I could’ve been on my way towards death and you would’ve just been risking time. Why bother?”

“You’re the medic. Why do _you_ help people?” They smirked.

“Money…?” He spoke quietly, reflecting on the question, but you could tell in his voice that he wasn’t giving a full answer.

“There’s a hell of a lot more ways to make money in this shithole, there’s more to it than that. You like helping people, giving them hope, you drive them to live. I know a lot of people who’d rather just get eaten than live one more day.”

“Hope is bullshit. They’re right to prefer death. You’d be an idiot to think otherwise.”

“Says you.” Kenny shrugged, threading the needle through his skin to seal the wound. They had a surprisingly gentle hand, so this part wasn’t as miserable as he had expected. As a medic, he was always relatively cautious, so he’d never had a run in as serious as this. “If you really believed this, you would’ve just asked me to kill you or leave you to die. But you didn’t, you let me help you without any questions.”

“It isn’t that deep, you know.” He scoffed, moving his head to look towards the wall, anywhere that wasn’t their knowing expression. The wallpaper was peeling off the edges, mold creeping out from underneath, only illuminated by the dim and flickering light of the lamp in the far corner. The conversation made him feel uneasy. He hadn’t talked to someone intimately like this in what felt like months, usually only interacting with others for the sake of business. Life tended to get lonely out on the wasteland, the closest friends you made were familiar rocks on your usual route.

Kyle thought back to all the stories he had heard of before. When life had been thriving, when you could live in a home, stepping outside without fear of what might come eat you or creep into your pores. People had looked healthy and full, not gaunt with scars across their face and sores growing into their skin. Yes, he was smart enough to know things weren’t perfect, that’s the whole reason the world was now like this after all. But they were still _better,_ and that filled him with a motivation he knew many others shared.

The hard part was admitting it. Many of those he ran into among his life had told him he was young and naive. That his mindset was weak and would get him killed before all else. The wasteland had taken the innocence of a young man, so Kyle had grown bitter and hostile like many others. He knew Kenny was right, and it felt like a refreshing breath of air to listen to them, but he didn’t like to be questioned like this. Especially with someone he had just met.

He turned his head towards them, taking a deep sigh. “It _really_ isn’t that deep. It just doesn’t hurt to stick around and see what happens in this hellscape. There’s not much else to do.”

They merely smirked in response as they began to wrap his leg in a bandage.

**Author's Note:**

> hhhh just really all about new vegas au right now... might write other stuff for it but idk


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